Great debut albums..

[The Curmudgeon]

Well, take note boys and girls - this will very likely be the LAST new thread of 2008, what with me leaving tomorrow morning and all.

Anyway - tricky thing, debut albums. Whilst a lot of people pine for the "older stuff", many bands don't find their feet, or their sound, until that "difficult" second or even third album.

Take Radiohead, for example. Not everyone's cup of tea, I know (certainly not their more recent stuff), but the debut Radiohead album is certainly no real classic, and it wasn't until their second album The Bends did they really show signs of greatness (and their third, OK Computer, is regularly polled as The Best Album Ever Made).

I mean, I'm so glad I didn't start with Prince's debut album as the first foray into his work, because it would certainly be the last. It's the same story with most of the bands/artists I like - Bowie, Manson, Weezer, Korn, Dandy Warhols, White Stripes, Blur..

There are exceptions, of course. The Stroke's "Is This It" album was pretty much talked about as the Saviour of Music by NME, and I will admit I got caught up in the hype and bought it without hearing any of it. At first I didn't see what all the fuss is about, and while I think it's more than a little over-rated, it's certainly my favourite of all their albums.

A band you'll never have heard of called Idlewild were once written by NME as having the ability to "write something so brilliant the word "music" will have to be redefined." And that hilariously OTT hyperbole came from tracks like this..

uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6q7psMSlcf4&feature=related

Their debut album (Hope Is Important) and the EP that came before it (Captain) are both glorious rock records, certainly better than the MOR, wannabe REM boring crap they're peddling now.

But anyway, that's the examples I can think of right now, and if I know my Dwellers you'll all have vastly different favourite debut albums.

So let's hear it...

[trashcanman]

Where to begin. Well, I'll go old-school first and say that the entire rock art form changed when Van Halen released their debut album. It not only changed the way bands looked and acted onstage, but it changed the way that guitars were both played and built. Adding classical solos to rock riffs changed EVERYTHING about rock for a good decade.

You're crazy not to acknowledge the fucking atom bomb that was Korn's debut, C. That super-downtuned sound hit like a sledge and changed the way metal sounded in the mid-to-late 90's almost as much as Van Halen's solos did in the late 70's and 80's. Still their best work by far.

"Devils' Night Out" by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones is the birth of ska-core and is still an amazing album to me. Every song is a classic in my book and there is no album that sounds like it, even among the Bosstone's subsequent works of awesome. Here's two tracks.





Then of course, there's it's spiritual predecessor, The Clash's self-titled debut, and it's spiritual successor, Sublime's "40 Ounces to Freedom", which no self-respecting California music fan should be unfamiliar with. "License to Ill" and "Straight Outta Compton" are still surefire crowd pleasers against which all rap albums are measured as well.

[pauless]

This could be an all-nighter.
The first Generation X album is still rockin' refreshment;

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSAbdmpNmK4

It's lucky it exists at all when you consider the pile of absolute shite everything else Idol's ever done is. 'Nice day for a ..White Wedding' Oh Christ.

In a completely different vein, Sandy Denny's 'North Star Grassman and the Ravens' is a class act;

www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4PlT7YbMko

Vids a bit sniffy, not much footage exists of her but it's always about the music.

The Nightingales 'Pigs on Purpose' is THE greatest indie album ever released. A profoudly high quality album;

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVtPR-O3fws

As is 'Real Life' by Manchester intellectuals Magazine, whose albums actually got better as they went on, not regressed like 80% of bands when they get their hands on the filthy lucre.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfVRH4vKcak

And I mus'nt forget old egghead Devoto himself;

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iabsOa0LoAo

His breath-taking solo debut 'Jerky Versions of the Dream' was unsurprisingly ignored on release but has since become one of the biggest cult albums of our time.
It's a privilege to be alive gentlemen.

[Ben]

Testament's 1987 debut, "The Legacy", is definitely in my top 10 albums of all time, if not my top 5. It blew me away when I first heard it. The opening track still gives me the urge to start a mosh pit every time I hear it.

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80's thrashers Exodus also had an immortal debut album in "Bonded By Blood" which is widely regarded to be one of, if not the, greatest thrash metal masterpiece of all time.

Another debut I absolutely love is Pantera's "Cowboys From Hell." Unfortunately, the only album that ever came close to topping it was their follow up album "Vulgar Display of Power."

The bummer about stellar debuts, though, (for me anyway) is that it seems artists often can't top their initial effort and slide into the "good" album zone where they just release a bunch of solid records that end up forgotten or discarded by the fans as "nothing special."